


Whose Hands Will Catch Us Now

by Erradianwhocantread



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Autistic Character, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, bad but often well intentioned parenting, complex dynamics between children and caretakers, thematic elements, yes there is a bombadil cameo now deal with it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-03 02:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11522430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erradianwhocantread/pseuds/Erradianwhocantread
Summary: Maglor insists on keeping the twins. The first week, and the journey to Amon Ereb, are difficult for all four as they try to reconcile their conflicting rolls of kidnappers and caretakers, victims and wards, in a way that keeps everyone alive and as undamaged as possible, considering the circumstances.





	1. My Brother's Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> 1) The building they are in at first is an abandoned Sindarin complex about 10 miles inland from the havens.  
> 2) One of the conceits is that Maedhros' should have died from grief after the Nirnaeth, but as dying of grief involves a spirit willingly relinquishing its body, and that would involve breaking the Oath, Maedhros couldn't fully die. He has a dead soul trapped in his body, necrotic, decaying, poisoning. It (among other nasty things) deadens his memories of Fingon the way the Ring deadens Frodo's memories of the Shire.  
> 3) Yes Maedhros and Fingon were elf-married in this before Fingon died, I just didn't feel like that was a relevant tag.  
> 4) shoutout to fidelishaereticus.tumblr.com and lilac-buttons.tumblr.com for helping me edit!

How his brother could sleep right now was completely beyond Elros, but he was glad of it. Elrond had cried and shaken until he could no more, and now at least he got to have a little peace. Elros wished he could sleep. He wished they could go home. He wanted mother. He wanted father to come back. He wanted so very badly to have been taken up with Elrond by someone who they’d known and spirited away somewhere safe, or that he and Elrond had grabbed hands and run away to live in the forests and be wild like their lost uncles, or that their grief had been enough to send them to the Halls… anything rather than be prisoners like this. They weren’t safe. They had to get away, but there was no way to now. The doors were too heavy and most of them locked, and the windows too high to jump from. But he couldn’t sleep, not when they weren’t safe like this, and he wouldn’t cry, not again, not where  _ they  _ might see him. So he would guard Elrond’s sleep. A good brother would make sure that no harm came to his twin. 

* * *

Maedhros sat in the kitchen, staring into nothingness while Maglor made a list of all the things they’d need now for Elwing’s whelps. He envied Amras his rest, though he could not wish their places reversed. He had not grown quite so selfish yet. His bloody clothes were stiff and uncomfortable but he couldn’t summon the energy to change them. And really, why bother? Was this not his true form, plastered with the drying gore of innocents? Maglor tried to pass him the list for his approval. He looked at it for a long moment before turning the full force of his exhaustion on his brother. “Remind me again why we’re keeping them?”

The question horrified Maglor. As if he had not orphaned scores of elf-children. As if he hadn’t killed a few himself. “Because they have no one else! They’re two completely helpless and friendless children in a hard and cruel world! They have no family and no one to look after them!”

Maedhros rolled his eyes. His brother’s gift for avoiding any hint of culpability had long since ceased to amuse. “Maglor, they have no friends, family, or place to go because we spent the entire day killing everyone they’d ever known and sacking their home. Or did you forget?”

The reminder clearly stung. Maglor’s response was clipped, a tone he had once only used on Curufin. “All the more reason to be merciful now.”

Maedhros had to laugh at that. “Merciful? Merciful?” Maedhros didn’t move from where he’d thrown his body into the chair by the fire like a bag of stones. How Maglor always had the energy to walk about putting everything to rights after a battle, when he could barely summon the strength to raise an eyebrow, was beyond him. He could feel that his boots were too close to the fire, that the back of the chair was digging painfully into his back, but rising from the chair seemed impossible. He turned his face to his brother, incredulous and long-suffering. “Merciful would be if I waited until they were asleep and slit both their throats, sending them peacefully to the Halls, where they’d be reunited with their family and friends and could emerge shortly into Aman, free from pain, from loss, from war, and from us! How is it merciful to keep them in this Middle Earth where it’s only a matter of time before the Morgoth either kills or corrupts them? Where they must be slain or be turned to evil use? Where they shall know nothing but suffering? How is it mercy to force keep them, daily, in the presence of the two who murdered their mother, their uncles, their grandparents?” Maglor made a disgusted noise. “Of course, you wouldn’t know what it’s like, having to see every day the creature who murdered your father and grandfather. I tell you, Maglor, our faces shall be a worse torment to them than Morgoth’s was to me! Can you really be so self-deluded as to think that you and I, such as we are, twisted, oathbound, dispossessed, fell things, could raise them in some way that did not fill them with terror, with despair, with hate?” He scoffed and turned his face back to the fire.  “No, better to kill them now and kill them quick. A little more blood on our hands shall not make much difference, and they’d be saved from a fate far worse than death.”

Maglor looked as if he wanted to retch. Instead he shook his head, grabbed a bottle of wine, and headed out of the room. “They had better be alive in the morning,” he warned darkly over his shoulder.

* * *

 

After cleaning himself off and leaving his clothes to soak in salt-water, Maedhros returned to the kitchen. He sat facing the fire, walking in memories of Amras. He’d started with the night after Amrod’s death, how he’d held him as he screamed out his guilt at having helped light the ship his twin slept on, the ship he’d driven him to sleep on, and progressed haphazardly, backward and forward, until he’d found himself tucking his baby brothers into bed together -- they always slept in the same bed -- and having yet another story demanded of him, not sung,  _ absolutely  _ no singing, since he wasn’t Makalaure and he sang so much better, so he  _ must  _ only tell them a story, and it must be an excellent one… well. They were sundered no longer. 

 

His reverie was ended when a something… no,  _ someone  _ slammed into him, knocking him and his chair to the floor with a furious and terrified cry of “ _ YOU WILL NOT HURT HIM I WON’T LET YOU!”  _

 

It was one of the twins. The feisty one. 

 

“ _ I WON’T LET YOU SLIT ELROND’S THROAT! _ ”

 

Elros, then. 

 

The child was beating him about the head with all the protective rage he could squeeze into his tiny fists. It was absurd. A child of no more than six taking on the most fearsome creature this side of Angband, completely sure of his ability to defeat, or at least cow, he who drove terror into the hearts of orcs with a single gaze, and all for love. 

 

A different memory floated to the surface then, one he’d thought lost. In it, he’d been knocked from his feet on the field of battle by some great hideous monster which was standing over him, reaching for him. Maedhros scrabbled for his knife to flee in death if it came to that, for he would not be taken again by the Enemy… and then suddenly he was there.  _ Fingon _ . Crying “ _ YOU SHALL NOT HAVE HIM! _ ” Something deep in the recesses of his soul gave a sickening lurch, like a broken limb that had weight put on it… 

 

And Elros landed a forceful punch square on his nose. 

 

He snapped back to himself and took both the child’s wrists in his hand, which only led to kicking and biting and more screamed threats about what would be done to him if he came near Elrond. His most fearful gaze, which had sent the stuff of nightmares scurrying before his wrath, only intensified the resistance. 

 

Maedhros could see it; the shared blood was obvious. It was not his beloved returned to him, but it was… again that horrible twisting inside him, and he recognized it as sentiment. He had felt what it had done to Fingon, in his long final moments, to learn that courage and hope and love mattered not at all… how despair had made a ruin of his spirit even as the Balrogs made a ruin of his body… and he knew this child, his kin, would feel the same if he did what he knew he should do. But he was not monster enough yet to do that to Fingon’s spirit twice. 

 

“Alright, alright! I won’t!” 

 

The child stopped trying to bite off one of his remaining fingers to spit “I don’t believe you!” at him before going in for another bite. A good strategy, Maedhros had to admire it. He would indeed have a very difficult time slitting anyone’s throat if he lost even two more. He dropped Elros’s wrists and caught them again behind his back, safe from his enterprising teeth. “You’re a liar! All Feanorians are liars! And thieves and murderers! But you won’t murder my brother, you  _ won’t, _ you  _ WON’T! _ ” 

 

He was right about them being liars and thieves and murderers. Maedhros should not have heard the ghost of Fingon’s voice echoing in the child’s shouts. He hadn’t been able to hear Fingon’s voice, even in memory, since his death, so why now, and why this pain in his spirit? “But I am not an oathbreaker. Whatever else I may be, I have never broken my Oath.” Elros snarled and squirmed in his grasp, but he kept going. “Will you believe me if I swear it?” What was he saying?

 

Elros stilled, considering. He looked warily at Maedhros through narrowed eyes before demanding “Only if you swear it as you swore your evil one, so you can’t break it, not even for a Silmaril.”

 

Nodding, Maedhros let go and raised his hand (what was he  _ doing? _ ), the words of his own damnation coming easily into his mind and then to his tongue. He called upon Iluvatar, upon Manwe, upon Varda, upon the hallowed mountain of Taniquetil, that no harm should come to either Elrond or Elros while they were in his care, and called upon the Everlasting Dark to take him should he allow it. Elros held his gaze, stern and unyielding, until he finished. Maedhros felt the new oath take root in him, clamoring uncomfortably for a hold against his old one, though this one felt… brighter, somehow, like sun but not like flame, and yet the double weight of Doom sat heavy in his chest.  

 

“Do you believe me now?” Maedhros asked, when the child’s wariness showed no signs of abating. Elros nodded gravely. They stared at each other for long minutes, Maedhros on his knees, the boy standing before him. 

 

As the wild courage which had possessed him dissipated and his body relaxed, Elros began first to tremble and then to sway and finally to cry. Maedhros felt his arms going out in offering ( _ what was he doing _ ) and the child instinctively and against his will fell into them. “Hush now…” he murmured against the dark hair, “No harm will come to you.” Reaching far back into the foreign country of his past, Maedhros recalled to himself the spells his parents had used on him, that he had used on his brothers, to sleep, and whispered them now against the small, shaking body in his arms. Once he was confident the child slept, albeit fitfully, he rose and carried him into the room Maglor had left them in. There were two pallets, but Maedhros knew without asking that such was not their way. He placed Elros next to his sleeping twin and pulled the blanket up about them both. 

 

The Oath raged in him, livid at being pitted impossibly against another, and he cursed his own weakness for allowing an incidental resemblance to undo his resolve, and his own selfishness that he would apparently rather the spirits of these two innocent children be crushed slowly and by other hands than his, than take it upon himself to spare them the horrors of living. Maedhros turned from the room, closing the door soundlessly behind him so as not to disturb what little peace was left to the twins, and started down the hall. 

 

He hadn’t gone three strides when Maglor turned the corner. It took him only one bleary, drunken moment to connect Maedhros’s presence outside the twins’ room with his remarks earlier about slitting their throats as they slept, and he lunged at his brother, closing the distance between them with surprising rapidity given his level of intoxication. He slammed Maedhros back against the wall and shook him, snarling “I told you not to hurt them, you disgusting monster! I warned you! I warned you!”

 

Had Maglor been sober, Maedhros might have been in real danger. He had no doubt that the lifeless bodies of young children in his own house would push Maglor past the control of his reason, and in his current state of exhaustion he doubted whether he could either counter or calm him effectively. But  Maglor drunk was unsteady on his feet, and Maedhros knew all his weaknesses as only an older brother could. This hardly called for violence, however. Maedhros placed his stump on Maglor’s chest to get him to stop the shaking and said “I couldn’t do it.”

 

“What?” Maglor hissed.

 

“I could do it. I couldn’t…” Maedhros gestured weakly with his hand. He had thought, for one mad second, to tell Maglor. Tell him about Elros’s attack, about Fingon, about the sickening spasms in his long-dead spirit, about the second Oath, about Ambarussa…. But Maglor was drunk, which meant that even if he heeded him now and believed him, tomorrow, he would insist Maedhros had dreamed it all, and even if he were told again, that the stranger parts were all simply the strained workings of an over-tired mind and all would be cured with rest. And so he merely said “They’re sleeping. Check if you like. I couldn’t harm them.” Maglor shoved him roughly against the stone before going to do exactly as he’d suggested.

 

Maedhros continued wearily back towards the kitchen. He found himself trying to place when exactly this gulf had opened between himself and his brother, when he had become unable to share his mind with Maglor, when Maglor had become incapable of understanding it. It would be easy to say Thangorodrim, but Maglor had been second only to Fingon in aiding the most difficult parts of his recovery. It was easy enough to lay it at Fingon’s feet, either before the Darkening of Aman or after the darkening of Maedhros’s own spirit. Fingon was perhaps the first secret he’d kept from his brother, and Fingon was the reason he was now as he was. And yet none of that was Fingon’s fault, and Maedhros had shared his brother’s confidence well after their hapless joining, and the first stones in this wall had been laid well before Maedhros had led him to his death. Where had it begun? Perhaps it was like love or doom or a flood, a thing that creeped and grew so gradually that one never noticed it at all until it had grown to such a force that it overwhelmed entirely, its progress so seamless that it had both always and never been. 

 

The fire wanted another log, but that would require a trip to the woodpile, which Maedhros suspected was completely depleted as neither he nor his brothers nor any of their folk had bothered to replenish it before the attack, so hell-bent had they been on the damned jewel. Either he’d wake first and have to set about the unpleasantness of gathering fuel and building the fire with the sludge of sleep still clinging to him, or Maglor would wake first, and he’d have to suffer his quips as he did it. But his body had turned to lead, heavy, and dull, his joints felt rusted, and in the volcanic ash of his spirit something was painfully taking root. So he slumped again into the hard wooden chair. 

 

He missed his brothers, and Maglor most of all. Strange, how you could long for someone who was only a stiff shout away. How had they let it come to this? How had  _ he _ , the eldest, who should have kept them together, kept them hale, kept them  _ themselves _ , let them come to dust and dust and grime? He sank heavily into the memory of sneaking out of their parents’ home with Makalaure, out of Tirion, down the Calacirya, all the way to the shore, where the luthiers of the Teleri had set a strange harp in the sea for the waves to play… how at his elbow, his young brother’s face had lit and lit at the song, how every aspect of his being had vibrated with pure joy and wonder, as if he too was one of the strings, how he had not stopped singing for days and days after… how Maglor had sung Maedhros back to himself, sung his shattered and splintered pieces back together, after Thangorodrim, had borne with such gentleness the mad ravings which had frightened off first Celegorm, and then Curufin, and then Caranthir, and finally Amras… Amras, the last to flee from his side, the latest of them to escape. 

 

Maedhros must have fallen asleep in front of the fire. He was suddenly aware that someone was tugging lightly but firmly at his sleeve. Maglor wouldn’t wake him so gently, not anymore. He could tell without opening his eyes that it was not yet light outside. The pull at his sleeve continued. Maedhros blinked, turning to see who was disturbing him, and saw no one. He blinked again, trying to clear the fog from his mind, and looked down. 

 

Elros. 

 

Clearly his power was fading. Time was, a spell of sleep from him would have guaranteed quiet for more than a couple hours. Or perhaps Melian’s blood in the child made him resistant. Elros regarded him skeptically, but without fear. The fire had eaten itself down to louring coals. By the time Arien’s light broke through their windows it would entirely consume itself. The dull red glow reflected unsettlingly in Elros’s dark eyes as they stared silent accusations into Maedhros. Finally, the child deigned to reveal to him the reason he’d been awakened. “Why did you do it?” he demanded, “Why did you swear to protect us?”

 

Maedhros let out an uncomfortable breath that could have been a bitter laugh if he’d had the energy. It was a cruel trick of their natures that such questions only ever occurred after the final step had been taken, after it was too late to avert anything. So they could always know exactly how and why their doom was as it was, and yet never prevent it. “Let it be enough that I did. Do not your Manish kin have some saying about gifts and looking at their mouths?” Elros only stared at him, relentless. Maedhros sighed heavily and shifted in the chair, becoming aware of his body’s list of complaints against his recent use of it. He scooped up the child and placed him on his knee where he wouldn’t have to endure his awful gaze. 

 

Elros was tense with something like disgust at the contact, and why should he not be? “It is a long and painful tale, and not one suitable for one so young as you.” Elros twisted in his lap to give him a withering look. Nothing the child had seen since Maedhros and Maglor had entered into the sphere of his life had been suitable for his tender age, and while any explanation would be imperfect, as Maedhros barely understood this himself, it would hardly be the worst thing young Elros had seen or heard in the last two days. 

 

But Maedhros found he had no idea where to begin. If he’d had Maglor as he used to be, he could have told him, he was sure, and his brother would have understood, disjointed as his tale may have been. But how to explain the inexplicable to this child? Did he start at the beginning, bright and shining in Valinor before the Darkening? He did not think he could. Too much of that was closed to him. And yet begin he must. “...I was not always thus. You may understand someday, Kanorinke, though I hope you never do. No one is born monstrous. We do not spring fully horrible from some land of nightmares. All the most terrible, even the Morgoth, even me, we were once fair.” Elros squirmed in impatience and discomfort at the thought. “Before I became a liar and a murderer and a thief…” How much, then, to tell? They had not made a secret of it, here in Middle Earth. There had been no reason for them to. Yet it had become the fashion to pretend Fingon had been unwed, or at least not to speak of it. A gloss truly worthy of Maglor. The child likely knew nothing of the High King’s taint, any more than he knew of the noble deeds of the House of Feanor. Both would surely have been taboo in a city made up of refugees from Doriath and from Gondolin. But then Elros need not know that the person who had saved him had been Fingon. “Long before all that, I had friend, who I dearly and truly loved, and he loved me in return, though I never did deserve it.” 

 

Elros had twisted again in his lap to look at him, inquisitive and skeptical, as if it stretched credulity to believe that anyone could have ever given their love to a creature so vile. “What’s his name? And where is he now?” 

 

Maedhros stared into the dying embers of the fire. Trying to remember like this stung like a hard blow to the head before the body figured out that this was  _ pain _ . “Kano.” Maedhros said. “His name was Kano.” It was not a lie, but he highly doubted this Sindar child would connect this piece of Quenya to the High King. “And he is dead.”

 

“You mean you killed him,” Elros grumbled darkly.

 

As good a truth as Maedhros had given for Fingon’s name. He had and he had not. His beloved had been destroyed by Balrogs, and yet had Maedhros not persuaded him to the attack, despite all his sound misgivings? Certainly Maedhros was responsible for the battle in which he met his death, and certainly he was responsible, at least in part, for Fingon’s coming out of Aman at all. And yet, “No. No, it was the servants of the Enemy who slew him at the last. Not I. I could no more have done so than I could slay myself.” Elros crossed his arms, unwilling to accept that it was truly possible for Maedhros to refrain from slaughter, and yet unable to bring any argument against it. “We had much happiness, Kano and I, before… This was when Ard Galen was a fair green plain, and Dor Lomin a place of peace. And yet there was war in that time, and danger, for the Enemy is never at rest. I was…” If Elros had heard any of the songs of Fingon’s rescue, he would know his identity immediately even with the barest details. Yet the most popular songs had all been written by Maglor. It was hardly possible that any such song of “Golodhrin Shenanigans,” as Thingol had called it, would have come down to him from his mother, but though Turgon was no friend to the Feanorians, would his people have gone so far as to expunge one of the highest deeds of the house of Fingolfin just to purge it of Feanor’s stain? 

 

“What was he like?”

 

Maedhros started. “What?”

 

“What was he like?” Elros asked again, annoyed at the slow and meandering quality of this explanation. “If he loved  _ you  _ he must have been a terrible fell thing.”

 

Of course, it must seem that way to Elwing’s child. “He was…” Maedhros felt himself choking on any clear memory of Fingon’s goodness. “He was bright as sunlight, clear and sparkling as a spring. Higher and more hopeful than morning or rain. And he was”  _ valiant  _ “brave. So brave. I thought once his courage was enough to repair the world. Terrible and fell he was only to the servants of the Enemy.” Elros was gearing up for another retort, so Maedhros continued. “During one of our countless battles with the Enemy, long, long before you or your father or his father were born, before the awakening of Men,” again, how much to tell? Maedhros wanted to speak of the rescue, or of the fire drake… well, he could weave a tale. Not as well as Maglor, and his would not rhyme, but this was hardly the first little twin to demand of him a most excellent and improbable story. And this way he could leave off trying to remember. “I found myself alone on the field of battle, surrounded by orcs, but then suddenly they all fled. At first I thought I’d scared them off, but then I saw why they’d run. Up through the ranks of the scurrying orcs there came a great fire-breathing wyrm--”

 

“You mean a dragon,” Elros corrected him imperiously. 

 

“No. A dragon has wings and legs. A drake, only legs. A wyrm is like a massive serpent with flames shooting from its nose and mouth, teeth twice as large as you, and a maw like the fire pits below Thangorodrim. It was bearing down upon me. I tried to fly but I had been injured in the leg and I fell, and I knew that in that moment I should die.”

 

Barely audible, addressed to the dying coals, Elros muttered “I wish you had.”

 

Maedhros had to stop himself from responding with ‘So do I.’ He pretended he hadn’t heard and went on with his story. “The wyrm was leaning over me, opening its jaws. I had only a second to wonder whether it was better to be burned alive or devoured. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, lept Kano, crying to the wyrm that it shall not have me. All others had run before it, all others feared certain death from this evil thing, but not Kano. He was not afraid. And so he joined in fierce combat against a creature so much mightier than he, leaping first to one side, then to another, wounding it with many wounds. A single Elf against such a huge monster, that drove fear with a single gaze into the hearts of orcs, completely sure of his ability to defeat it or at least send it crawling in misery back to its master, and all for love. I…” How to explain, when he did not understand himself what had happened? Maedhros knew, for he was hardly the first or the last to be sundered from a beloved by the cruel bite of death, that the rotten miasma that had replaced Fingon’s presence was not typical, and what had happened tonight, a ghost and yet no haunting…

 

“You’re lying.”

 

Maedhros sighed. So these little ones had inherited Turgon’s uncanny ability to simply Know if he were hearing facts or fiction. “It is not a lie, though it is not exactly as it happened. Yet it is more true in its unfaithfulness than ‘twould have had I given you a perfect recounting of the facts.”

 

Elros scoffed. “A lie cannot be true. Anymore than a liar can be truthful.” 

 

If they were all to live comfortably together, and Maglor had decided they should, Maedhros would have to see that these children understood the concept of allegory. He seemed to recall that Turgon had found the device suspect when Maglor and Maedhros had invented it in Tirion, and had never approved of it as a method of imparting meaning. “It is true, in so much as he rescued me without fear from a great and terrible foe, against impossible odds, for his hope was higher and surer than the vault of the sky, and he loved me,” again Maedhros felt his throat closing around the fact and the memory of the fact. “And his love and his hope and his courage saved me many and many times. And if a bit of each of those times has been stitched together to make one story, is it the less true for that?”

 

Elros sat in sullen silence, neither accepting his argument nor combatting it. Maedhros readjusted the child on his lap slightly. “I had thought such ferocious love gone from the world with him, such burning hope and courage snuffed forever by the Enemy’s darkness. Until I heard his voice echoing in your shouts, and saw his spirit blazing in your eyes when you lept to your brother’s defense. And as I have told you, Kanorinke, I could no more lift my hand against him than I could raise it against myself. And such a spirit is at least as worthy of protection, even unto the darkness everlasting, as a Silmaril.” 

 

This answer did not seem to satisfy the child. Elros pushed himself off of Maedhros’ lap and kicked with impotent fury at the coals, setting sparks flying up the chimney and onto the hearth. He sniffed loudly and kicked them again. Maedhros watched intently but made no move to intervene. “Damn the Silmarils!” the child shouted, his voice cracking with anguish and exhaustion and a hatred born of hurt. “Damn them to the depths of the Earth! And the depths of the Sea! And… and… and all the way to the top of the sky! I wish they had never been made!”

 

Elros made to give what was left of the fire another sound kick, but Maedhros pulled him back.  _ You shall come to no harm while in my care.  _ “As do I.” Maedhros said. “As do countless others, alive and dead. And yet made they were, and cannot be unmade until the world itself is.” The light in the room had begun to shift as the dawn approached. Maedhros felt all the weariness of the past day and night tugging at his bones. His body was demanding things; food, water, something soft to lie down upon… he could continue to ignore it, but he didn’t relish facing Maglor’s waspishness with no fortification. And Elros would be hit with something similar soon, and he would not have the luxury of choosing whether or not to give in. “And so there is no use in wishing. It will be morning soon, Kanorinke, and your brother should not wake alone.”

 

Shrugging off Maedhros’ hand roughly, Elros glared at him. “My name is  _ not  _ Kanorinke. My name is  _ Elros! _ ” he spat, before stomping out of the kitchen. 

 

Maedhros cast a sidelong glance at the nearly dead coals. Maglor would be irate when he stumbled out of his drunken stupor to find that he must build a fire himself before he could brew any relief for his well-deserved headache, but Maglor would probably be irate when he awoke regardless, and Maedhros had long since lost the ability to care about his brother’s moods. He snatched the water pitcher and what was probably the last of the waybread from the counter and dragged himself back to his own room.


	2. Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since most of this chapter is from Maglor's perspecitve, please take everything with a 10-lb bag of salt. He is possibly the least reliable narrator out of the four characters. It should go without saying but since a quick perusal of their tags shows me it does not, Maglor's aspersions of Elwing and Earendil are completely self-serving and in no way based on anything like fact.

Elros had not meant to fall asleep. Yet that was apparently what he had done, as otherwise it made no sense to wake up because he was cold. Elrond must have left the window open  _ again  _ even though mother had told him and told him that he mustn’t, no matter how he liked listening to the sea. He would have to tell her what his brother had done at breakfast. His hands reached out to pull the blanket tighter about him. It didn’t feel right. It was scratchy. This wasn’t his blanket. This wasn’t his bed, this wasn’t… 

 

The memory of the day before cut through him as cruelly as his captors had cut through his friends. 

 

Elros’s eyes sprang open and he shot up in bed. He couldn’t breathe. Elrond wasn’t there.  _ Elrond wasn’t there!  _ Elros looked wildly around the room, nothing about his surroundings registering until his eyes lit upon his brother.

 

His brother, who had indeed left the window open.

 

Upon a crumbling stone sill, staring out into the brightness of the morning, sat Elrond. Mother had also told him that he mustn’t sit in windows like that, lest he fall. Elros choked on the air his eyes stung. Mother had told him… Mother had… She had  _ told  _ him! And he was  _ ignoring  _ her and  _ what if he fell _ ! Elros balled his hands into fists and punched the pallet. “Get down from there!” he shouted. Elrond didn’t move. “I said get down from there!” His brother sat as if he had been carved from stone. “How dare you! How  _ dare  _ you! Mother  _ told  _ you not to, and you’re just going to… to… just because she’s not here anymore to tell you? You think that means you don’t have to listen to her? Is that what you think?” Tears had begun flowing freely down Elros’s face, and his body was starting to ache from his fight last night with the dragon. “Do you want to fall and leave me all alone?” Finally at the end of his patience, Elros got up from the pallet and crossed to the window. “Well you  _ can’t _ ! You’re coming down from there if I have to drag you, do you hear?”

 

Only once he got within dragging distance did he realize that his brother probably did not. Elrond had drawn his knees up to his chest and was twisting his fingers on each other, staring blankly out at the horizon where the sea was barely visible, humming softly to himself a song of the wind on the waves. Grabbing Elrond when he was like this was perilous. Not that grabbing Elrond wasn’t usually perilous, but when he was like this he might startle violently, and then he’d fall. A hopeless, fearful sob escaped Elros. Whenever his brother decided to be like this in a window he’d always gotten Mother, and she’d been able to get him down safely, but she wasn’t here anymore. The dragon had sworn not to let his brother come to harm, he could probably go to him, but he wouldn’t do it  _ right _ , and Elrond would startle, and then he’d fall. 

 

Not knowing what else to do, Elros started singing the tune his brother was humming. They ran through the entire song twice while the sun climbed higher into the sky. Elros’s stomach was twisting with hunger, sorrow, and fear. “Please, Elrond, please come down,” he choked, “please don’t leave me alone.” Elrond kept humming, though the melody was faltering now, and he was starting to jerk his head to one side. “Please. You can rock and hum all day and I won’t bother you at all, I won’t even look at you, just please come down.” Elrond showed no sign of having heard him at all. Elros’s legs had gone wobbly again, and again he felt himself swaying. He fell down against the wall below his brother and pulled his own legs up around his chest, buried his face in his knees, and cried.

 

Some time later, Elros felt that awful, scratchy, wrong blanket being draped about him. He startled and looked up, expecting to find the dragon or the other one, ready to drive them away from Elrond lest they frighten him and he fall. Instead his brother’s eyes darted away from his, up to Elros’ brow, as they often did. Elrond’s hands fluttered as he finished arranging the blanket around Elros’s shoulders. His body and his motions spoke of apology, reassurance, distress. He stood before his brother, bouncing slightly on his feet. Elros looked him over, but did not try to meet his eyes. “Elrond, where are your words?” he asked. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand Elrond when he lost them, as he sometimes did (Elrond was careless that way), but there was a difference between Elrond misplacing his words and this. His brother gestured in the direction of home. Gone, taken. Just like their home, Elros thought. And then, what if, just like their home, he couldn’t get them back? Anger flared up in him again, and he pushed himself to his feet. “Then I’ll make them give them back!” Elros handed the blanket back to his brother, and was out the door before he could see Elrond respond No.

 

* * *

 

Of  _ course,  _ Maglor thought, as he peered wearily at the cold and ash choked hearth in the kitchen, Maedhros had let the fire go out. Of course he had. Maglor should have known better than to even think that he might not have, might have had a single thought for his poor brother who he knew very well would feel wretched, or to the poor elflings who would now have to wait for breakfast or even something to warm themselves by for said wretched feeling brother to scrape together a fire at the glacial speed that would naturally follow from his state of wretchedness, not even a single thought for himself, as he would also suffer from the cold and from the lack of anything warm to eat or drink. Maglor dragged himself over to the sideboard to at least get some water for the throbbing behind his eyes and found that Maedhros had, in fact, spared one single thought for himself and swiped both the water and the waybread. Selfish and predictable were his brother’s most consistent traits. Maglor’s throat felt like sandpaper, his head as he imagined the iron in his father’s forge must have after a hammer blow, his stomach writhed, and the pains were coming through from yesterday. Maedhros would say it served him right, as if he had not become nearly as fond of drowning his sorrows of late as Maglor. Well. Maglor would just have to remind him of that when he finally deigned to show his ugly face.

 

Predictably, Maedhros pushed open the door to the kitchen only moments after Maglor had gotten a tidy little fire going  _ and  _ fetched water (really, the Sindar of the wilder lands were practically barbaric, no running water), not once but  _ twice _ . He looked awful, but then, he always did. “Ah! Maedhros!” Maglor chirped in his cheeriest voice, ignoring the daggers it sent into his skull, “ _ So  _ nice to see you this morning! I trust you slept well? And I’m  _ so glad  _ to see you didn’t risk injuring your  _ only  _ hand by going out in the dark to get wood to replenish the fire. No, no, I don’t mind  _ at all _ , if it’s the price to pay for keeping my dear brother hale, having to gather the wood myself, mere moments after I opened my eyes, alone, in the cold, and build one anew before I’ve taken any sustenance.” The hand comment was low, even for him, and he knew it. He’d always been above such remarks, leaving them to Curvo. Still, Maedhros had brought this on himself, and he knew it.

 

Predictably, Maedhros made no response. He simply set about making dough for frying. Using the water that Maglor had had to  _ fetch  _ of all things (really, as if they were  _ men _ !) without even so much as ‘thank you.’ He’d probably leave Maglor to clean up the mess from this as well. Typical Maedhros, happy to  _ cook  _ the meal, but too lazy to have anything else to do with its creation. And then Maedhros stopped. Maglor muttered “Let me guess, you’re going to make me do this too.” as he walked over to see what the problem was. Maedhros was staring, stricken, at the beginnings of three flatbreads. “Don’t tell me we’re missing some crucial ingred--”

 

“Amras.”

 

Oh. Right. They only needed two now. All Maglor’s venom dissolved and he placed a hand against his brother’s back. “It won’t go to waste. The little ones can have it. Cut the last one in two and it will look intentional.” Maedhros only stared at the cuts of dough like they’d become fish heads. “It won’t ease his spirit if you throw it away. Just get them in the pan, you’re nearly done.” Maedhros continued staring at them, so Maglor took the knife and cut the third into two smaller lumps. It was an odd reversal for them. Usually it was Maglor whose sentiment took over his sense, and Maedhros who intervened with his ruthless pragmatism. It was an awkward arithmetic, from three to two to four. Yet Maedhros managed to get the dough frying, and threw some eggs under the pan to roast as well. Three and then four. Once Maglor was satisfied that Maedhros wasn’t going to do anything else strange or terrible, he pulled a stool over to the long table and sat, waiting for his brother to finish the cooking. He’d done enough work this morning, after all.

 

Maedhros did not bother to dust off the plates that were surprisingly still on a shelf before putting the food on them. He pulled up the only chair in the kitchen (of course, why would it even occur to him to offer it to anyone else?) across from Maglor and fell into it after laying the plates on the table. Maglor immediately burned his fingers on the flat bread. “We should go back for him,” he said as he waited for his meal to cool. Maedhros cast him a long-suffering look but said nothing. “He should have a proper burial.”

 

Maedhros scoffed. “As should everyone we slew yesterday.”

 

That wasn’t really the point Maglor was trying to make. “He deserves better than to be left for carrion crows.”

 

“As do they all, but what has that ever had to do with it.”

 

“He was a high prince of the Noldor.”

 

“ _ He was our brother! _ ” Maedhros shouted. He put his face in his hand. Eventually, in a more reasonable tone, he continued. “He was our little brother, and we failed him, just as our father did, just as we failed Amrod, and Celegorm, and Curvo, and Caranthir. And yet twould be foolish to grieve for him, for he is far better off now than we… what does it matter, Maglor, if the crows and the wolves have his corpse now? He’s escaped all of this, at last. Burying the body won’t ease his spirit.”

 

Losing patience entirely with his brother, Maglor snapped “It  _ does  _ matter! He--”

 

The door opened in the way that doors do when someone very small has made a valiant attempt to slam them, and Elros burst through, furious. “ _ LIAR!”  _ he screamed at Maedhros. 

 

On the one hand, it was absolutely true that Maedhros was a liar. On the other, that didn’t seem like it should be the first epithet to spring to the child’s mind. Maglor started to get up from his stool. “Elros, w--”

 

“You  _ swore  _ no harm would come to him! You swore! You--”

 

Maglor had no problem at all vocally overpowering such a young elfling. “Elros, what has happened?” 

 

“You stole his words!”

 

Now Maglor really had no idea what was going on. “...Stole whose words?”

 

“ _ ELROND’S!  _ You stole our mother, you stole our home, you stole our Silmaril, and now you stole his words!”

 

Maglor glanced at Maedhros, who seemed just as perplexed. “I’m sure we can find his words for him again” was he talking about some book? Some bit of writing that had some special sentimental meaning that had been lost between Sirion and here? “Just calm down and we’ll figure this out.”

 

Elros was not to be calmed. And from the look on Maedhros’s face as those words left Maglor’s mouth, he knew that already. “You’re liars, and murderers, and thieves, and I hate you, I  _ HATE  _ you!”

 

Maglor looked at Maedhros, silently begging for help, and finally and with a great show of being put upon, turned to face the distraught child. “My brother knows more about words, and has more power with them, than any now living in Middle Earth. You would be wise to let him help.” Elros puffed himself up to spew another round of nonsensical calumny. “You would  _ also  _ be wise to eat. I believe starvation would meet the criteria for harm, and if you think I will not force you before I will be forsworn--” It should only have taken one glance from Maedhros to terrify the little one into submission. It took only one glance from Maedhros to terrify most things into submission. That it had required  _ that  _ tone must mean the child was either very stupid or very brave, enough that the distinction between courage and dimwittedness had vanished. Elros huffed sullenly over to one of the untouched plates and began picking angrily at the flatbread.

 

“I will see what I can do for your brother,” Maglor said, as gently as he could, before turning from the kitchen. He still hadn’t eaten anything. And his brother saw no issue at all with sending him off do deal with this cryptic problem on his own with no sustenance. 

 

As he was stepping through the door Elros called out “Don’t touch him! He doesn’t like it.” Maglor would have thought that Turgon’s grandson would have made sure his children had more of a grasp on manners.

 

Maglor cursed internally as he made his way to the room the twins had been left in. If this proved indeed to be some item, he and the boys would be getting off on a very bad foot. Their first lesson would have to be in proper identification of what constituted an emergency, followed by one on appropriate language and appropriate ways to speak to others. Perhaps it was a blessing, after all, that he would be raising them, as it seemed their parents had been content not only to abandon them, but neglect their education when they had had them. Maglor supposed he could at least be grateful that this task had gotten him away from Elros’s infernal shouting. Peredhel though he was, had the child’s head been covered and his identity unknown, Maglor would have taken him for some mannish whelp. How such a little terror could have come from Turgon’s line…

 

When he pushed the door to the twins’ room open, Maglor found Elrond doing some sort of strange… dance in the corner. He didn’t give any indication that he’d noticed Maglor enter. Dance was not the correct word, but Maglor couldn’t come up with any word in Sindarin or Quenya that described it better. Elrond was flitting around on his toes in an obscure pattern, his arms sometimes straight out, sometimes at his chest, fingers twisting each other grotesquely. He did not appear distressed, exactly, but his expression was distant and grim, as if he were reading the fate of the world in the stone floor. It was far too early, and Maglor was far too hungover and far too weary from the day before, to deal with this childish nonsense. Whatever puzzle these boys had devised was anything but amusing. “Elrond?” he asked gently. There was no change in the boy’s demeanor. Maglor approached him, eager to get to the bottom of this so he could  _ finally  _ do something about his throbbing head and griping stomach. “Your brother is in a terrible state about your having lost your words.” Elrond merely continued his dance. “Could you tell me what he means by that?” Elrond started jerking his head to one side. There was something irritatingly familiar about this behavior, but Maglor couldn’t place it immediately and didn’t feel like wasting the time or energy it would take to dig for it. As it was it was taking most of his slim reserves to keep his tone kind. “I know a thing or two about words,” he said, reaching out to place a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Why don’t you let me--”

 

Immediately upon contact, Elrond flinched away as if Maglor’s hand had been made of fire. He left off his dancing and stumbled frantically across the room, keening through his teeth. He settled on the floor as far from Maglor as the room would allow, his knees drawn up to his chest, his head turned so he could press his forehead to the smooth stone of the wall. 

 

Memory crashed upon Maglor. Turgon. That’s where he’d seen something like this before. When he’d been very young and Maglor and Celegorm had teased him. Though Turgon had never been quite this far gone. Perhaps the trait was worse in his great-grandson, and clearly Elrond had not had the benefit of such excellent parents as Turgon had. The deep silences into which Turgon would sink must be what Elros had been talking about with all his foolish prattle of “stolen words.” The silences had never been permanent with Turgon, and hadn’t seemed to harm him at all, however frustrating they’d been to everyone else, so Maglor couldn’t imagine why Elros had made such a fuss about it. This silence must have started after they’d left the Haven at Sirion. That would explain why Elros blamed them. And they were not to have peace until this silence ended.  _ Excellent.  _

 

A soft, musical noise cut through Maglor’s rising ire and he realized Elrond had started to hum. The little elfling’s tune was… beautiful. The sound surprisingly strong and sweet for one so young, so apparently untutored, and burdened with mannish blood. Turgon, he remembered, had dearly loved his singing. It could calm him from one of his wild spasms, draw him out of his silences and withdrawals, and fascinate and delight him in a way that was downright ridiculous. There was every reason to believe his grandson would be the same. And his Art might prove more useful yet. He had sung his brother’s mind back together, thwarting the design of the Enemy and undoing much damage, so who was to say he couldn’t sing this elfling back into speech? However, it had been nearly an age since Maglor had sung any songs of power, and the idea of weaving any power at all into his voice now was exhausting. Power would have to wait until after breakfast, if not indefinitely, but a simple song he could manage. Carefully, so as not to startle Elrond again, Maglor approached within a few feet of him and sat himself down on the cold stones (why, in all Arda, was the window open?) facing the wall, as the child did, as Maglor had done often with Turgon when he wasn’t tormenting him.

 

The tune was simple enough, and even in his reduced state Maglor decided it was much too simple for so great a Bard as he. Harmonizing with the little one’s clear notes brought a richness to the thin, childish tones that was pleasing beyond what Maglor had anticipated. It had been so long since he’d been around children, he’d forgotten the magic of their voices lifted in song. And Elrond was not indifferent to the effect either, though one who had not known his great-grandfather might have mistaken him for senseless in this state. The child’s ears twitched in the direction of Maglor’s voice. He kept singing, introducing a new vocal flourish to each verse. By the fifth, Elrond had moved his head away from the stone wall, and his arms had relaxed a bit around his knees, though his eyes remained stolidly fixed on the corner. It had a strange and powerful effect on Maglor, soft and bubbling and pressing at the corners of his mouth and eyes, a satisfaction at watching his art work a damaged spirit back into the world in a way that nothing else could. He had forgotten what it felt like, it had been so long. It almost felt like joy. 

 

Maglor’s stomach gave a particularly adamant gripe, and he wondered if he’d been gone long enough that Maedhros had forgotten that other people also had physical needs and decided to appropriate any uneaten food to his own uses. It occurred to him that Elrond had gone without food for longer than he had, and with his age and his mixed blood was more vulnerable to the ravages of hunger. “Come, child,” he said, when they’d finished the seventh round of chorus, “there is breakfast waiting for us, but if we tary much longer I fear our brothers shall mistake it for their own.” Elrond made no signs of motion, or even of hearing, though Maglor could have sworn that he saw disappointment in his posture when he’d stopped singing. “Well,” he said, getting heavily to his feet, “I am going before they claim my share. I will do my best to ensure yours is not gobbled up, but I make no promises.” The sound of Elrond’s thin, clear humming dogged his steps out of the little room. Maglor batted it away. He had saved the little elfling and his brother from Maedhros’s savagery and from certain death in the wilds, had done his best to see they had a comfortable place to sleep and food to eat, had even seen to their tantrums before his own needs. He would not feel guilty now because this one refused his help.

 

As he had predicted (truly the worst part of living with Maedhros was the utter lack of surprises), Maedhros had made short work of his own food and was now making eyes at Maglor’s unguarded plate. He did not even bother making a feeble attempt at concealing his disappointment when he realized he would not be able to lay claim to his brother’s share. Elros had been watching the door intently for Maglor’s return, short legs swinging impatiently, and had apparently only taken enough food to keep Maedhros from acting on his threat of force-feeding. Maglor was scarcely through the kitchen door before the child’s shrill questions began.

 

“Well?” Elros’s tone was imperious beyond all belief. Certainly got from Thingol. “Where’s Elrond? Does he have his words back? Why isn’t he with you?” Maedhros might have at least spare a terrible glance to remind the boy of his manners. It wasn’t as if terrible glances required any effort at all for him. An ugly sneer distorted the elfling’s face. “You couldn’t help him,” he said, in a voice that sounded far too like Maedhros to seem natural in any creature so young. The disappointing triumph of having been correct about the moral and possible limitations of another, the absolute scorn and hatred it produced, in a child’s mouth, were more horrifying than any mirror the Lord of Mandos could have held up to Maglor. 

 

Letting the shudder at the ruin that had already been made of this child pass through him (a fit metaphor for the ruin done to Arda in its youth by the Morgoth, fit symbolism for some great song, if he’d had the will left to write any more of those) before responding. Though he tried to be as calm and kind as ever he’d been with his excitable nephew, the act was soured with impatience at Elros’s foolishness. “On the contrary, little one. He already seems somewhat better, though I suspect it will be some time before he chooses to speak again. It is nothing to worry about. Lord Turgon was similarly afflicted, and would often fall into a profound silence. It never lasted more than a few days. Now, be easy and eat your breakfast.” Perhaps, Maglor thought as he resumed his own seat on the three-legged stool and put a protective hand about his plate to deter any last hopes his brother may have had, he ought to have more sympathy for young Elros. After all, he had had a most trying two days. Yet he had ever found it difficult to sympathize with fools or lackwits, and Elros should have known by this age, and from his familiarity with his brother, that a silence was not worthy of hysterics. 

 

When Maglor again looked up from his plate, his stomach pacified and his headache somewhat abated, some horrid change had come over the boy. He looked almost as if his spirit were preparing to relinquish his body, or as if he were about to slide boneless from his seat. His face was ashen and blank, his head hanging too-heavy off his neck. Somehow he was weeping, though no tears fell from his eyes. He sat thus for some time, his eyes moving from Maedhros to Maglor and then back again. He spoke like he was sleep-talking. “May I bring my brother his plate, please?” He seemed to ask it of no one.

 

“Of course you may, little one.” Maglor answered. As disconcerting as the change was, at least he was no longer shouting, no longer demanding. “And you do very well to ask so nicely.”

 

The child slipped from his seat and took up the untouched plate meant for Elrond. In the doorframe he muttered “My name is not ‘little one.’ My name is Elros,” before disappearing down the hall.

 

Maglor turned in some confusion to Maedhros, who was staring at Elros’s abandoned plate. The transformation of their ward had been as inexplicable to him as it had been disturbing. Maedhros had the too-familiar look of having seen something that made him remember that which he would rather not. “Have you any idea what that was all about just now?” Maglor asked.

 

Maedhros was silent for a long moment, and a deep sorrow with which Maglor was certainly not familiar filled his eyes. “That,” he said at last, his voice thick with the horror of memory, “was a captive realizing fully that no one is coming to save him.” It was not unusual for Maedhros to leap to hyperbolic or ridiculous comparisons like this. Maglor suspected that unfortunate pattern was the result of some badly healed mental scar. His brother’s face was doing some truly astonishing and uncharacteristically maudlin things as whatever terrible memory Elros had awakened played itself out. Maglor noted that this was one more discussion he’d have to have with the twins, the sooner the better. Setting Maedhros off like this was usually quite perilous, and the little ones should know to avoid that danger. Maedhros pushed his chair back and stalked miserably out of the kitchen, leaving the mess from the meal decidedly to Maglor to attend to. Predictable, revolting, the way he used these episodes as an excuse to get out of any unpleasant task. 

 

Well. One of the (few) advantages of squatting for one night in an abandoned homestead was that it mattered not in what state the place was left. Someone should get the twins prepared for the journey east, and someone should salvage anything edible from this sad kitchen, and Maedhros had made up his mind to be thoroughly useless, and it was best, after a loss like this one, not to ask too much of their few remaining followers. He would scavenge the stores, which would give Elrond time to eat and Elros time to get himself out of his funk (though Maglor doubted he’d avail himself of it), and then he’d explain to them what the next few weeks would look like. He seemed to recall children were better if they knew what to expect. That sounded right. Then they’d pack up their pallets and move out. At least he could trust Maedhros to get their followers ready for the journey. Maglor rubbed his eyes and sighed heavily. Hopefully, once they were back in their own lands at least, they could have something that resembled peace.


	3. Rock and Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is some brief psychological self-harming behavior from Maedhros in this chapter so if that is something you are sensitive to, be aware. There is also description of a child having their touch boundaries violated regularly, so if that is something you are sensitive to, also be aware of that.

Elrond did not speak for the duration of their journey. 

 

Well, that wasn’t exactly correct. He spoke to Elros, he just didn’t talk. He spoke to the others as well, or at least he tried, but they didn’t understand. Elrond knew they would understand him better if he spoke with words, but he couldn’t. There was too much in his head, and it was coming too fast and all at once, or there would be just one thing but it was too large to squeeze into words, and then he had to find them and they were all scattered about, and make his mouth form them and that was very, very hard when everything was Wrong, when everything was changing so fast and none of it made any sense and he couldn’t see where it was all going. When terrible things had been done to all his friends and his mother was gone, and his home was gone, and the people who had done all that had taken he and his brother away. 

 

Besides, he didn’t want to talk to them. But he’d hoped they’d understand some things. Important things. Things like “don’t touch me” and “there are too many of you moving around about me” and “tell me what is going to happen I don’t understand,” or “get the candle out of my eyes,” or “don’t mess with that rock, it is an Important rock,” or “you are all making too much noise, make less noise.” Elros mostly understood him though, and he’d tell them. The taller one usually didn’t care, usually just shrugged and stopped if Elros told him, but the other one, the one who was nice sometimes, who had the nice voice and would sing songs to him, he wouldn’t listen when Elros told him. He’d be angry at Elros (why??) and decide he knew best. It didn’t make any sense! If he was nice, he would listen! If he was nice, he’d understand! Mother always understood. Father had too. And Mother was gone, and Father was gone, and now they were so far from their home, and they hadn’t left a note, and how would Father find them when he came back from the sea, how would he find them?? Of course, if he was nice, he wouldn’t have destroyed their home and taken them from it. But he also sang songs to Elrond when he could see he was upset (he was always upset, but of course they didn’t always see if because they didn’t understand him), and spoke softly and made sure they had food and blankets. It didn’t make sense.

 

The journey was mostly awful. He never knew where they’d end up. He did not even know where they were going, since those two hadn’t shown him a map (he wanted to ask for one but he couldn’t). He did not know what would happen to them when they got there. People were always touching him, people he didn’t know, bad people, people who had done awful wicked things to them, to their friends, to their home, to their mother. It didn’t seem to matter to them how it upset him or how Elros told them. They sat behind him on horses and put their fronts against his back and their arms around his front. They picked him up and put him on horses and took him off of them. They touched his shoulders because he didn’t talk when they did and sometimes even grabbed his arms or put their hands on the top of his head. His hands had gotten very clumsy, and people would take things from him, and yell at him, and grab his hands. He couldn’t see the sea anymore and couldn’t hear it. And Mother was gone. It was very hard to get to sleep without Mother and without the sea, and without his ragpup. The tall one, at least, had understood that they should have only one bed, not two, so he and Elros were not separated at night.

 

Some things about the journey were not awful. The woods and fields they stopped in were lovely. The trees were always very friendly, especially the evergreens and the birches (Elrond knew much about trees. He’d read it in books and heard songs about them, and they told him much themselves) and they let him sit in their boughs and were gentle against his back. They showed him things, and the world always looked better from their vantage, all the strangers small and curious from above, the branches chattering to each other, and the sky closer and softer. Horses looked very funny from above. The trees gave him things too, pinecones and pretty leaves and bits of bark, even a bird’s nest. The trees were quiet and kind, and they understood him and he them. Elrond would have climbed up and never climbed down, but Elros got so upset when he didn’t come down, so very angry and scared and sad that he’d be left alone with the strangers, so Elrond always came down, and always brought him a tree-gift, though Elros didn’t understand those. The streams they would stop by were a delight. He hadn’t had streams at home, and he still missed the sea, but the streams had so very much to say! All day they chattered and chattered and sang to themselves all night, and they ran and danced and laughed always, always so happy, cheerfully turning their rocks smooth and so very very  _ round _ ! And you could see right to the bottom! You couldn’t see to the bottom of the sea, couldn’t even see your feet when it was around your knees, but even when the streams were deeper than the tall one’s mangled ears, you could see all the way to the bottom! You could see the fish, and the frogs, and the things that looked like lizards but were not! And they were always so cold! The one who sang songs was always telling him and Elros to get out of the streams lest they turn blue or get too mucky, but the streams weren’t mucky at all! And they smelled like clean and cold, not like salt and deep, mysterious, dark things that lived in the sea… the tall one seemed to think it was good they jump in the streams, or at least didn’t care, except for one time when Elros slipped in a fast running part and he’d become very frantic and pulled him out. If he hadn’t been made to leave all these lovely things constantly and with no warning, hadn’t been surrounded by the awful strangers who’d taken their home and their mother, hadn’t had the strangers constantly touching him (touching him!), it would have been altogether wonderful.

 

As their journey continued, Elrond became more and more annoyed at having to leave his trees and his streams all the time. The strangeness of the journey had resolved a little, settled into a pattern he could understand. They did not travel at night, because there were Orcs (or so the strangers said. He’d never seen one yet.) abroad, and because the Peredhil, as they called him and Elros, having Mannish blood and being so young, should sleep, and not in saddles, and should eat regularly. The one who sang also didn’t think it good for them to have hard days of riding or set too quick a pace. Elros would have met whatever pace they set, and Elrond would have been happy to have this journey over quickly, but he never asked them what was best, he only decided that he knew, and he almost never did. Every day when the sun began to dip below the trees, they would halt, and someone would grab Elrond off the horse he’d been placed on, not even asking if he could get down himself, and he and Elros would be allowed to play within earshot while the adults made camp, though Elros usually decided to help them make camp (which usually meant telling them how to make camp). They would be given a dinner made from what had been brought from their home and what had been found in the woods, and then there would be songs, and then they would be put to bed, and then at dawn, they would be woken, given food, the camp broke down, and then Elrond would be grabbed with no warning from behind and placed on a horse for the rest of the day. Sometimes they would stop in the day to rest the horses, and then he and Elros would be allowed to get down and play within earshot until they were grabbed again.

 

This day it had been particularly bad. They had been given Not Food, and when he hadn’t eat it someone had tried to make him (he wasn’t sure which one it had been, he’d had his eyes closed), and the brothers had gotten into a fight and stomped all about them yelling and slamming things, and then, because he was angry from that, the one who sang had been rough with him and even more grabby than usual, and had gotten angry about Elrond’s bag being too full and dumped all his tree gifts and stream gifts on the ground and rode on and  _ left them there!  _ When they’d made camp, the one who sang had started a fuss about his hair and what a mess it was turning into and tried to put his hands all in it, and when he’d started crying the tall one had suggested that instead they could just  _ cut it off _ , as if that was somehow better, and Elrond had had his hair pulled and yanked for nearly an hour (Mother had  _ never  _ pulled). And, to top it all off, Elros had shoved him, which was particularly unfair, considering that Elros was the one who had gotten them into this mess in the first place because he had wanted to see what was happening. 

 

Elrond had disappeared into the woods as soon as he was able. He hadn’t meant, at first, to go far, but he kept seeing interesting things ahead, and he wanted to investigate them, and he wanted to get far enough away that he couldn’t hear the brothers shouting at each other. Eventually he’d found a waterfall ( _ a waterfall! _ ), which had been almost enough of a delight to make up for the rest of the day. He had sat listening to its chatter, splashing his feet in the cold cold water and making leaf-boats to send over the edge for some time, and then he’d climbed about on it, feeling the green green moss and marveling at the shiny black of the wet stones. And then he had found a cave! It was, he decided, a special cave, and must belong to a river spirit who served the Lord of Waters. He could tell these things by the way the water rushing over the entrance looked like their Silmaril when the sun hit it, and made rainbows if you looked from the other side. He had made her (it was surely a her, all river spirits were) a picture out of some stones and moss and leaves and left it just inside the water curtain, and then he had gone deeper into the cave, letting his hands run all over the stone sides. 

 

He’d have to leave soon, go back to the camp where everything was noise and grabbing and nothing for his hands, and no friends now that Elros was mad at him, and never see it again, never meet the river spirit who lived here. The thought of having to go back, and of Elros being mad at him, and of having to leave this beautiful place, and having to live forever with the brothers was too much. He was so very angry, and so very sad, and so very hurt, and all of it, and all of today, and all of the weeks since they’d been snatched were too very very much. He moved himself about the cave wildly, making noises like a fearsome beast, kicking bits of rock that littered the cave floor or throwing them at the cave’s walls. The wild noises became sobs, and he found himself sitting in the dry back corner, crying and crying for everything that had happened to them. It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair! Elros was the  _ most  _ unfair! He was always making Elrond come down from places, always shouting because he didn’t want to be left all alone and now he’d gone and left Elrond alone and he hadn’t even gone! He didn’t want to go back to all of that, not when he didn’t even have Elros to go back to. 

 

But maybe he didn’t have to go back.

 

Why couldn’t he stay here forever?

 

He could befriend the river spirit, and she would show him all her secret ways, and maybe she would wed him, like Melian had wed his great great grandfather. He would eat river plants and fish and berries, and make her things from the round stones and the flowers, and she would get a message through all the waters to his father, who would know where to find him. She would bring him otters and herons and they would be his friends. He would be Elrond Peredhel, Lord of the Waterfall, his crown would be made from river grass and white flowers and the pretty red stones that lined the riverbed, and his realm would be a haven for all who had lost their families. 

 

No, he was not going back. 

 

* * *

 

 

Something had been tugging at the edges of Maedhros’s attention for the past few hours, rapping insistently at the inside of his mind. Like he’d neglected to check the fire before going to bed. He couldn’t place it, and it only served to irritate him more. It was astonishing, really, that he and Maglor had not seriously quarreled since they’d set out. It was probably the longest they’d gone without it since Menegroth, if not since the fifth battle. By all rights they should be worse now. Amras was no longer here to play peacemaker between them, and Maedhros knew that both he and Maglor loved to pick at new wounds just to make them bleed. It may have been the Oath. It had howled fiercely within all of them as soon as Luthien had put one of the damn jewels actually within their grasp, turning them all into a pack of snarling animals, driving them mad one by one. Now that that Silmaril was once again as unattainable as the other two, perhaps it slept again, and some of the vitriol between he and his brother would sleep with it. A pretty enough explanation, and a pretty lie. 

 

Maglor had been trying to provoke him since before they’d set out, and his failure to rise to the occasion had only soured his brother’s temper further. Not that Maedhros had not done plenty to rile Maglor, but a critical element of their nasty little dance was that Maglor never “started” it, never snapped, it always had to be Maedhros who turned the veiled barbs into open accusations and shouting. No, it was his own mood that was altered, not Maglor’s. And it was the Peredhil that had altered it, not the Oath.

 

Maedhros had forgotten, if he’d ever known, that Beleriand was beautiful. He hadn’t had time to notice when he’d arrived here, and if any part of him had, that memory was lost. And then he’d been taken captive. A strange thing for an Elf, to become indifferent to the world’s beauty, when the love of it had been woven into their very souls. Elrond was, perhaps, as far from indifferent as it was possible to get. Maedhros had not paid any particular notice to the other twin, who seemed almost like some strange, jerking shadow of Elros, for the first few days. And then one of those early autumn rains had happened, the kind that was more mist than rain, that left every plant bejewelled and glimmering in gray light and brought the fecund scents of earth and rot and life out into a perfume as heavy and intoxicating as anything concocted by the most skilled lords of their craft in Aman. Every fibre of the child’s being had vibrated with joy and wonder at it all. He couldn’t keep still, he danced about wide-eyed, touching the tall blades of the grass, the leaves of the bushes, the branches of the trees where they dipped down, setting off showers of sparkling drops which only delighted him more. Something had stirred within Maedhros, watching Elrond, something strange and badly healed. It felt almost like coming home only to realize you’ve been away so long that home has been half-taken by ruin and by nature, and yet recognizing it still. He found himself looking forward to Elrond’s recovering from being taken down from the saddle (Elros’s warning about his not liking to be touched had been quite serious) and discovering the area around their camp. Even in the most desolate place they’d had to stop he’d found things to marvel at, beetles and pebbles and grass. The sorts of things Maedhros had not seriously looked at since… well as far as his intact memories were concerned, since Aman. 

 

Without fail, if they made camp near even a single tree, Elrond was up it in a trice, and Elros usually hot on his heels demanding he return to the ground. Something about their sweet, earnest, meaningless bickering made him sentimental enough about Maglor to tolerate his jabs with equanimity. And Elros kept him more than busy enough, with his insistences that they do everything the correct way, which only he seemed to know, his careful scrutiny and blunt critique of everything Maedhros did, and his constant questions. Maedhros told himself he saw to the cookery to give Maglor slightly less legitimacy in his martyrdom and to keep Elros from pestering whoever took over the task to death. Earendil, it seemed, had had very different ideas about what constituted the proper practice of the art than the House of Feanor did, as Elros was pleased to inform him. Maedhros also told himself he tolerated the child’s “input” to keep him out of trouble, and so he could practice his art in getting someone to do what he want without them realizing it. He’d been getting rusty, and he was a poor Noldo indeed if he let his craft slip away from him. 

 

He also told himself he spent so much time with Elros in the hopes of more memories returning to him. He had spent the short remainder of that first night losing himself in that fragment, glutting himself on the bit of Fingon’s face visible through his helm, drowning in his shout. In the weeks they had been travelling, he had tried desperately to scare up another, or more of that one, ahead to the part where Fingon had helped him to his feet, where their hands had touched… He had not willingly chosen such pain since Angband, when the other choice was surrender. 

 

There was no hope, there had never been very much hope, and yet he tried again. And why not? No one needed him, fewer would miss his charming company. The country where they had made camp resembled in certain minor details the place, not far from lake Mithrin, of their second joining. Maedhros arranged himself so he was sitting as he had then, when they had faced each other and begun anew what time, betrayals, ice, and fire had marred, let his eyes close, reached back in his mind. Again he felt his spirit sicken as he came in contact with the foul and sticky blackness that had replaced Fingon in his mind. He leaned into the tar, soot, blood, and mire. This could not be all there was left. Before the attack on Sirion, he had accepted that it was, had stopped trying to regain any glimmer of Fingon, but if one could reappear, the others must be there, even if he could not get to them, they must be there. He pressed himself against the nauseous pain, not even trying for the memory itself anymore. Fingon was on the other side of this pain, and if this was as close as he could get, then he would relish in it as he had once relished in Fingon’s presence. 

 

Spirits, like bodies, could only endure so much before the consciousness was overridden by instincts deeper than will. Maedhros became aware that the awful blackness of these scars had been replaced by the muted blackness of unconsciousness. He couldn’t hang onto that comfort either. His eyes opened. The sky was darkening, but not yet dark. Assuming his swoon had lasted minutes (as was usual), he’d endured no more than an hour, give or take. And all he got for his troubles was a lingering sickness in his spirit long after he’d been unable to take more. 

 

And yet the elfling had scared up the one fragment. Why might he not eventually scare up another?

 

The nagging feeling still pulled at the edges of his mind. Maedhros gave an irritated huff and puttered about the camp to give himself something to do. His brother had been particularly troublesome today. The twins had been troublesome today. The road and the horses and the weather had all been particularly troublesome. Whatever it was tugging at his mind could wait. He knew he shouldn’t revisit the fragment, especially so soon after meeting his limit. He knew that he would only wind up losing himself in it. He knew that doing so would only inflame the rotten ache he had almost gotten used to before Elros had given him this double-edged gift. He knew that if he did, he’d be barely functional tomorrow. And he also knew that that was exactly what he was going to do for as long as he could stand it tonight. Why should Maglor be the only one to regularly wake in self-induced wretchedness chasing a hopeless respite?

 

Maedhros was jolted from his memory, once again, by Elros striking him in the face and shouting at him. The child’s face was contorted in a wild fear. His eyes were wet. “Liar! Liar! You’re a filthy liar and I hate you! You swore you’d protect him and you  _ lied _ !” Several things fell into place all at once. Elros had likely trying to get his attention for some time. Elros was only ever like this about Elrond. Something must have happened to Elrond, must have  _ been  _ happening to Elrond… how had he failed so utterly to recognize the stirring of an Oath? Him? After all this time? Elros’s voice broke in a sob. “Elrond is  _ gone!  _ He’s gone!”

 

Maedhros fought down his own growing panic. The child was not dead. Could not be dead. If he had been, surely everlasting darkness would have claimed him already. “What do you mean, he’s gone?” 

 

“I thought he had just gone up a tree by himself like he does! But I can’t find him! I can’t find him and he  _ knows  _ he has to come down when it gets dark, he always comes down when it gets dark! He wouldn’t fall asleep in a tree without me, and he… he… he’s wandered off, he must have, and now he’s  _ gone _ !”

 

Wandered off. In overrun Beleriand. At night. Wandered off. Maedhros leapt to his feet. Wandered off. He’d known Elrond could be absent minded and unaware of his surroundings when he’d been upset, or when he was enamored of one particular aspect of them, and he’d gone and left him unsupervised after the day they’d all had in a particularly stimulating part of country… Wandered off. “Then we’ll find him. He can’t have got far.” That was exactly what Maedhros had said at Menegroth. And while Elrond could not have gone very far, there were all manner of creatures that could have found him, could still find him, and there were roots to trip over, stones to fall upon, and pools to fall into… yet the last thing Elros needed was to see fear and uncertainty in his face. 

 

They raised Maglor from his sulk, despite Elros’s insistence that they set off straight away, and the three set off in the direction Elros had last seen his brother. It took them some time to pick up the little elfling’s trail, and it was not easy to follow. If Amras had survived, if they’d had him with them now, Elrond would be found easily. He wouldn’t have refused to help this time, and if he’d dared even think it Maedhros would have acquainted him with the true meaning of fear. Elros and Maglor were calling for Elrond every few feet, and Maedhros found it not only irritating but pointless. Elrond did not speak, it was not as if he could answer them! If anything, their shouts probably drove him deeper into the woods, faster, with less attention on where he was going. At worst, it alerted any of the Enemy’s creatures in the area to the presence of a lost and defenseless child. The faint trail wound on and on as the moon rose above the tops of the trees. 

 

Couldn’t have got far indeed. 

 

The sound of rushing water could be heard ahead. Maedhros’s heart sank further. Elrond was extremely fond of streams, and in all likelihood his trail would run cold at this one. They’d have to search both banks in both directions for some ways. This was assuming he hadn’t knocked his head on a stone or been carried away by the current. Elrond’s trail led straight for what turned out to be a waterfall. He’d apparently spent some time on the bank, but now was nowhere to be seen. 

 

Elros ran frantically up and down the bank calling for his brother. Maedhros stared into the white foam of the falling water, his second Oath burning in his brain. The current roiled angry and swift below. If Elrond had somehow slipped or been overpowered above and been borne down… both boys could swim, but it was doubtful that a skilled and strong fully grown Elf could save themself from those rapids… the only hope he would have is if he’d been washed up on the bank somewhere downstream, broken and confused, easy prey. 

 

“He’s probably just fallen asleep somewhere hidden.” Maedhros tried to ignore his brother, tried to tamp down the panic and fury rather than venting it on him. They’d both had enough of that for one day. “He’ll most likely turn up in the morning when he’s hungry.” Maglor, apparently had not had enough.

 

Maedhros rounded on his brother. “Turn up in the--  _ do you know where we are? _ ” Maglor made no response. “Do you sleep, Maglor? Are you lost in a memory? Or have you decided you miss Curvo  _ so much  _ that you must imitate him, and throw out whatever you think our father  _ might  _ have said in this situation? Turn up in the morning--” Maedhros shook his head in total disbelief. Maglor was as committed as anyone to his lies, but Maedhros had never thought him stupid. “A harmless enough strategy in Valinor, when we’d take it into our heads to run away from home, granted, but, tell me, Maglor, what is the  _ most important  _ distinction between here and Valinor in this regard? Hmmm?” Maglor would neither meet his gaze or respond. “There are no Orcs in Valinor! Nor are there wargs! Or trolls! Even the wolves and bears are kindly disposed towards children! And besides  _ that _ \--” 

 

A shrill wail cut off the diatribe. For a terrible moment, Maedhros feared and hoped that it was Elrond. But Elros, it seemed, had been listening to Maedhros’s litany of dangers. “Now see what you’ve done,” Maglor muttered before trying in vain to comfort him. Maedhros left them to range the bank upstream. He couldn’t find any trace of a trail. The water was frigid, Elrond couldn’t have stayed in it for very long. If Amras were here, or Celegorm, or his blasted dog, they would have found him, they would have been able to keep this promise, keep him safe, they would have had the skills required. Maedhros was as useless now as he had been in Doriath. They should return to camp, organize search parties… 

 

He was going in the wrong direction. Elrond had not gone upstream. The new oath had flared up in his mind at the edge of the fall, and now it was tugging him back. How long, he wondered, would it take a half-elven child to freeze in the water that rushed down from the mountains, if he were somewhere at the base of the fall, unable to move or call out, perhaps unable to hear… 

 

The bright moonlight shone in Elros’s desperate, terrified tears and glinted off the rushing water. Maedhros was reminded of a very different sort of light dancing on water, a different twin inconsolable at a separation. Elros screamed for his brother, screamed for him to come back, screamed his apologies for whatever petty squabble they’d had earlier… Amras, too, had blamed himself. Maedhros had had to hold him back from the burning ships, as Maglor now held Elros back from the falling water and the dangers of the night. Was it better, in the end, Maedhros wondered, to do so? Was stopping him from following Elrond into the darkness a mercy? Maedhros did not think it had been for Amras. Had Amras also known this soul-sickness? Had he now doomed Elros to a lifetime of it, to never knowing a life without it? 

 

It was the arbitrary folly of creation that Maedhros might be unmade for failing to murder for a jewel, and yet not for this or the thousand and one other things he’d done to make himself worthy of it. He’d let Amrod burn. He’d allowed Amras to be torn from his twin, to take part in burning his twin, to become a monster, to be killed. Elured and Elurin he had orphaned and then allowed to be left in the wastes of ruined Doriath, allowed to starve or freeze or be destroyed by fell beasts, though at least they had had each other to the end… and now he had not only orphaned Elros and Elrond, but allowed Elrond to disappear as he had the last pair, tearing a part of Elros away with him. 

 

Downstream yielded the same result. He was going in the wrong direction. The lodestone of this Oath was clear. Elrond was, somehow, by this waterfall, and yet nowhere to be found. The moon had traversed the better part of the sky by the time Maedhros climbed back up the bank to where Maglor was still holding Elros. 

 

The poor child still cried for Elrond, though his voice had gone ragged from screaming, and though his will was still to run into the night to find his twin, his body had begun to slouch against Maglor. When he saw Maedhros returning, his face lit with hope for the briefest moment, only to sour with fury and disappointment when he realized Maedhros was alone. He flung a clump of sod at Maedhros. “I hate you! I hate you! You were supposed to protect him! You swore! You  _ swore _ ! I hope the darkness takes you and I hope you  _ die  _ and I hope I never see you ever again!” Elros’s sobs redoubled, broken occasionally by pitiable cries of “Elrond.” 

 

Maedhros could have apologized, could have acknowledged that Elros was right to hope so, could have let him know that though they couldn’t find Elrond he was alive and nearby, could have put him under a sleep at least to ease his pain, but what would be the point? Elrond would still be lost, Elros would still be in the care of kidnappers, murderers, and bandits with no hope of rescue, and Morgoth would still destroy them all in a matter of time. It would not be so much longer until dawn. If the child had fallen asleep somewhere nearby (though how he could have slept through the commotion the three of them had made Maedhros did not know) he might be easier to find when he awakened, and the Peredhil took after Men in that they awoke with the light. Maedhros sat a short distance from Maglor and Elros and stared into the falling water, wondering if the Darkness would be true nothingness, or if the soul-sickness were perhaps a taste of it.


	4. Blue and Yellow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elrond gets a visitor in his cave who helps him deal with the turn his life has taken and the twins are reunited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Thanks as always to fidelishaereticus and lilac-buttons for their help  
> 2\. There is some description of trauma and one instance of a child having touch-boundaries violated (not in a sexual manner, just in a being grabbed manner)   
> 3\. No Feanorians contributed perspectives to the makings of this chapter.

Time was one of many many things that Elrond was certain worked differently for him than for most, and one of a few things he wished did not work differently. People would talk of things happening all at once, or being two places at once, as absurdities that could never happen. And yet that was precisely what was happening now. He was in the cave behind the waterfall, his back against the uneven stone, surrounded by a comfortable darkness, the smells of cold and wet and rock and water, the friendly roar of the waterfall, and he was also at home, in the smallest closet behind the small closet in the cellar, his back pressed to the smooth stone of the wall, surrounded by the smells of dry and musty and sand, and the darkness pressed in on him in a way that made the air old and tired. Outside were awful sounds, screams and shouts and clangs and bangs and thuds, and he didn’t know what was going on or how long it had been. The air in his cave was fresh and sharp and clean, but outside there were still awful noises of shouts and screams and stomping. Elros had left their hiding place, despite Mother telling them very sternly that under  _ no  _ circumstances were they to leave unless she came and got them out, or Gil-Galad, who would know where they were, and who they would know by the password, came and got them out. Elros wanted to see what was happening, wanted to help protect their home. Now he was screaming and crying and the clangs and thuds were getting closer. Elros was not in the cave with him, and he could hear him outside, screaming and crying, and he could hear the brothers who had captured them, would capture them, shouting…

People always seemed to want to be able to be in two places at once, but it must only be because they didn’t know better. Being in two places at once was horrible.

Another sound joined the shouting and screaming and stomping and thudding and clanging and rushing water. Someone was singing. It wasn’t his captor, the one who sang. It was a happy song, a song about pretty flowers in pretty water under pretty starlight. Whoever was singing sang in blue and yellow, and sang in a voice Elrond had heard in the streams, a friendly, joyous, bubbling voice, clear and strong. The song changed. It was still friendly and clear, but there were questions in it now, questions about him. And then the blue-and-yellow and the friendly-clear-bubbling were  _ in his cave _ ! The soldiers and their shouting had come into his hiding place. Elros had given him away, and they’d come into his hiding place and grabbed him too, and dragged him out and there’d been people he knew, people who were his friends, lying on the floor all covered in blood and terribly still…

_ Now then, my little Elf, what are you doing in the River-Daughter’s house, eh? _

Elrond buried his face in his knees and twisted his fingers until they hurt. But the blue-and-yellow reached out to him without touching him (the way Elros or Mother would), and he felt a boundless good will radiating from it. He peeked at it sideways and saw that the blue-and-yellow was sitting on its heels on the cave floor a little ways away from him with a kindly, smiling face, the sort of face you could not imagine without a smile. It looked very much like an Elf, only Elrond did not think it was one. It was not like any Elf he’d ever met. It was almost like a puppet, though he could not say why. The Elf-puppet was wearing blue travelling clothes and bright yellow boots. Perhaps this was the river spirit who lived here. Elrond pointed to where he’d left his picture for her, but stayed curled tightly in the corner.

_ Well this I shall have to show the River-Daughter! It has been very long since the Elves of this land have left her gifts. But Goldberry is gathering water lilies and will not come til morning. _

So this was not the river spirit, but someone who was friends with her. Elrond could feel its bubbling laughter filling the little cave though it made no sound. If the blue-and-yellow was not the river spirit who lived here, then who was it?

_ Why I am Master here! And so you need fear nothing. Not the things that creep in the darkness, nor the swift water, nor losing your way, nor the ghosts you bring in here neither. _

Elrond had not meant to bring in ghosts or defile the cave with them, only they were stuck to him now and he didn’t know how to get them off, which probably meant he should not have come in the cave at all! But the bubbling laughter embraced him reassuringly.

_ Do not fret, do not fret! Iarwain will see to your ghosts! _

The blue-and-yellow that was not the river spirit was named Iarwain! It had given Elrond its name! He wanted to give it his name, but you had to talk to give people your name.

_ No you don’t! Who has been telling you such silly things, Elrond? What have names to do with talking, eh? _

Elrond’s spirits lept up at that. This was exactly… no,  _ better  _ than he had imagined. Iarwain understood things, understood  _ him _ , in ways not even Elros did. Elrond felt in this instant that he had known Iarwain all his life. Iarwain blew an exaggerated puff of air and sang a light and powerful verse that was (as every good verse was) part Nonsense and part Meaning, and then Elrond was firmly and only in  _ this  _ place, in  _ this  _ time, and all the ghosts he’d brought into the cave on accident were gone! Not gone as if they had never been (and Elrond wasn’t sure he would have liked that), but blown out and toothless and put to sleep. Elrond lifted his face from his knees, smiling as broadly as he ever had, and clapped his hands for joy. Iarwain laughed and clapped hands too.

_ I told you I would see to the ghosts. Now let us sing together, little friend. _

And sing together they did, for a very long time. Iarwain did not mind singing the same song over and over, did not mind that Elrond did not sing the words at first, and laughed and helped when Elrond added to their music by clapping his hands and tapping on the cave walls. They would sometimes have to stop altogether to laugh and laugh, as their songs were very, very silly, and all about trees and streams and their secret ways. But Iarwain would not let them sing all night.

_ Ho, now, Elrond, we cannot stay here and miss the picture the fair dawn will paint for us. And I have left my Goldberry to gather lilies all by herself. Come, come, I will take you to meet the River Daughter, and you shall have honeycomb and sweet cream for your breakfast. Come along, for Goldberry is waiting! _

At the edge of the water curtain, Elrond paused as a massive yawn overtook him. He had not slept at all this night. He wondered if Elros had slept. They did not sleep apart. But maybe Elros no longer minded. Maybe Elros had slept better without him. The thought of Elros sleeping peacefully alone in the strangers’ camp, not missing him at all, made his earlier sorrow surge back up, his earlier rage not far behind, and hunger and weariness… he was going to cry again. He was going to cry and spoil everything, and that only made him angrier which only made him need to cry more.

_ Oh, I do not think so. Did not you hear him shouting all night? But come along, come along, Goldberry is waiting! _

Suddenly Elrond was not sure he wished to go. He did want to meet the river spirit, and he did want to stay with Iarwain, and stay with the waterfall and everything else. But the awful, awful brothers would put Elros on a horse soon, no matter how he shouted, and take him away, far away, to he knew not where, and then he would never ever see him again. They would take Elros as they had taken his home and his mother and all his friends and all his things. It was one thing to be away from him for one night, but Elros gone forever…

This wasn’t at all fair. That he should have to choose between going back to the awful brothers and leaving this wonderful place, or staying with his new friend and losing his brother forever…

Now he was crying in earnest. Now he really had spoiled everything.

_ Spoiled? Not at all, not at all. Iarwain will take you to your brother. All’s well, little friend. _

But all was  _ not  _ well! Nothing was well!

_ Hey now! You don’t think Iarwain is going to vanish, just like that? I am Master, not just here, but all over wood and water. And there are many waterfalls for us to sing in in this wide world. You need only call for Iarwain, and Iarwain will come! For the waters are all one, in the end, and Iarwain is Master. Now, after me: _

Iarwain sang then a song of calling, of returning, of safety and of always, in the fashion they had sung in together all night. Elrond sang it after, and felt the smiling blue-and-yellow surround him, hold him close, drive out all his fears. And then Iarwain was singing again, the song it had sung before, to drive out his ghosts.

_ After me. _

Elrond repeated the song. When he got to the end, Iarwain made again the exaggerated puff of air, as if blowing out an imaginary candle, and then looked expectantly at Elrond. Elrond sucked a great breath of air into his lungs and then blew out a fleet of candle-ghosts he had conjured in his mind with all his might. The performance left them both giggling.

_ You need not fear to go now, for you know how to quiet the ghosts, and you know how to find me. And there will be streams where you are going, and we will sing together, and you can help me take lilies to Goldberry. _

Elrond sniffed and nodded. If he got too frightened, if everything became too too much, he could call Iarwain, and Iarwain would come to him. If the ghosts troubled him, he could blow them out. And now he knew that there would be a stream wherever the strangers were taking them, and that Iarwain would be there also, and that there would be lilies. A vision had come to him as Iarwain spoke of a wide pool where a rushing stream widened out after a fall, smaller than this one, the edges lush with reeds and grasses and floating flowers, and among them a silver-green-gold that must be the river spirit herself. This, he knew, was where they were going. And now going back to the strangers and to Elros didn’t seem so terrible as never seeing Elros again. Iarwain beamed at him and reached behind his ear, pulling back two pieces of golden honeycomb that Elrond was quite certain could not have been in his hair, for his hair was not sticky.

_ Breakfast for you, and breakfast for your brother. Now come along, or we shall miss the painting that the sun is making! _

They walked through the water-curtain and out onto the fall, Elrond careful to shield his gift from the spray. The eastern sky lightened, but the clouds were too dense for the sun to make colors in the sky. Elrond looked to Iarwain, but Iarwain had dispensed with its elf-puppet and was now blue-and-yellow and happy-clear-bubbling again, and it pressed Elrond fondly to itself before nudging him gently in the direction of the bank, where he could see Elros asleep on one of their captors, and the other sitting not far off. Elrond hesitated, but Iarwain pressed him reassuringly and tugged him forward towards Elros. The song of summoning came to Elrond’s mind, and he bent his mind to Iarwain in farewell before picking his way carefully up the black stone to the bank where Elros slept. Iarwain’s cheerful songs echoed behind him down the waterfall and away down the stream.

* * *

Elros stared vacantly at the grass and stones and bit of Maglor’s leg that happened to be in his field of vision. He didn’t raise his head, he didn’t weep, he didn’t struggle out of Maglor’s grasp. There was no point. Elrond was gone, and gone forever. And Maedhros, who he had decided he could trust since Maedhros couldn’t hurt them, would be claimed by the Darkness Everlasting soon, since he’d let Elrond come to harm. And then it would be only Maglor, who he didn’t trust, and didn’t like, and who was far more frightening than Maedhros, who Elros had seen, fey and fell, cut the throat of one of his friends without even looking at him. He knew not what would become of him, and he no longer cared. There was, or would soon be, no one left at all who cared for him or who he cared for. He was all alone. His body ached from having fallen asleep on Maglor, and he was cold and damp and hungry, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered.

The tips of familiar shoes entered the field of Elros’s vision. He snapped his head up and launched himself from Maglor, knees and elbows jabbing into sensitive flesh, and flew at Elrond, Elrond who had come back, Elrond who was not gone forever, Elrond who wasn’t dead!

Elrond, who predictably stepped deftly out of his path, and let him land face-first on the grass.

Behind him, Maglor was still grumbling about having been elbowed in the stomach, but Elros didn’t care. Elrond had come back! Elrond had not left him all alone forever! Elrond was alright! Elros was laughing and crying at once, something he’d only ever seen grownups do. As he picked himself up from where he’d fallen, Elrond held out his hands, which he’d kept behind his back, to reveal two fat and dripping pieces of honeycomb, one of which he held out to Elros.

Elros took the honeycomb and held out his own arm. “Please? Please can I?” A smile broke his brother’s serious face, and Elrond folded them both into a rare hug. “You must never, never, never, ever leave me like that again!” Elros insisted, “You have to bring me with you. What if you hadn’t come back? What if… what if there’d been a  _ bear _ ?? Or a dragon! Wha-- mmmph!” Elrond had shoved one of the honeycombs into his mouth. It was delicious, and that, coupled with his brother giggling at him and craning over his shoulder to take a bite from the other honeycomb, kept him from being cross about Elrond being  _ rude _ . Or for having run away and left him behind and scared him. Or getting his hair all sticky.

Hands came down on their shoulders and pulled them apart. Elrond shrieked and tried to squirm away, but he was held fast. Elros snarled, dropping the honeycomb on the ground, and tried to catch the one who held them with fists or teeth.

“Elrond, what were you thinking, worrying everyone like that and putting yourself in such danger?” Maglor sounded like he cared, like he was really worried. Maglor always  _ sounded  _ like he cared. But if he cared, he wouldn’t have separated them just now, and wouldn’t have done any of this to them at all. “You must not-- stop twisting!” He jerked Elrond’s arm, and Elros could tell that Elrond was near to tears, to screaming, to maybe even running away again if given the chance. Elros had told them, he had  _ told  _ them, that they mustn’t touch Elrond like that, but they wouldn’t listen, and Elros had had enough. He sank his teeth into Maglor’s thumb as hard as he could. Maglor yelped and cursed, and, most importantly dropped Elrond, who flitted about in distress.

“Enough!”

Elrond flinched and put his hands, still sticky from the honeycomb, over his ears. Maglor and Elros dropped each other. Maedhros stood from where he had been sitting, stern and implacable. The brothers were going to fight. Elros was sure of it. They were going to fight, and Elrond was going to get frightened again. It was what had happened yesterday. This time, when Elrond ran, Elros would go with him.

“Maglor. You will go tell our followers that the boy has been found. That he is unharmed. And. That we will not ride today, as both the children and myself have need of rest.” Maglor stared at his brother and didn’t move. “Now.” Muttering about no wonder their people were leaving them in greater numbers every day with such a congenial leader, Maglor executed the orders he’d been given. “Elros.” Maedhros’s tone had gentled, but he was still commanding, not to be disobeyed. “I am sorry that my brother has ruined your breakfast. You and your brother must still eat. May I trust you to prepare a meal from our stores while I speak with him.”

It was not a request. It was also completely impossible. If he wanted Elros gone, he’d have to drag him away and tie him up. “No! I’m not leaving him! And I’m not leaving him alone with one of  _ you _ !”

“Elros. Go.”

Elros had been winding up to explain that that was absolutely never going to happen when he felt a sticky hand in his own. Elrond was beside him, shaking his head vigorously  _ no _ . Elros wanted to hug him again, but he didn’t.

Maedhros cast a very irritated glance at the sky and then crouched down before them. “Elrond,” he began, “I know you have no reason to wish to remain with us. And I know… trust me, I do, the pull of freedom at all costs in a… situation such as this. But. There are dangers in the woods and wastes. Wild animals, Orcs, hunger, cold… even the stones and waters.” Elros felt his brother twitch in disagreement at that. “For your own sake, and for your brother’s sake, you must stay in our care. You will not come to harm. I have given my word on that.” Why, Elros wondered, had Maedhros wanted him to leave if all he was going to say was things Elros had already said, or would say later? “Now, you do not speak. I will not pretend to know if it is by choice. But it is not safe for you to have no way to tell us if something is amiss.” Maedhros made a series of strange motions with his hands and then looked disappointed. Why should he look disappointed? Elros didn’t trust it and leaned closer to his brother. “Alright. Once you’ve eaten and bathed and rested, I will start teaching you the gestural language. You can talk to us with your hands, no need for speaking. I will also show you how to mount and dismount a horse. If you can scamper up trees and waterfalls with such alacrity, you are more than skilled enough to master it.” It couldn’t be that Maedhros had needed privacy to say these things to Elrond, and Elros began to wonder if he was wrong to start to trust him. “Now let’s get you back before Maglor has my hide.”

A part of Elros still wanted to run, to go and hide wherever Elrond had been last night and stay there forever. But he followed behind the dragon as he led them back to where they had made camp. Elrond was very angry about the spoiled honeycomb, and so was Elros, but they didn’t speak of it. Elros was making up his mind very hard to never be cross with his brother again. Being cross with him had been one of the reasons he’d gone away, he was sure of it, and even now, as they went back hand in hand, Elrond lagged and kept looking back at the waterfall. Elros decided he didn’t care at all for waterfalls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think Iarwain sounds familiar and haven't figured it out yet, Iarwain is the same creature as Tom Bombadil. Elrond specifically references having known Tom/Iarwain long ago in Fellowship so. That's my excuse for Deus ex Bombadil.


End file.
